FORMATIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF LANGUAGE REGIMES: TURKEY, A CASE STUDY
by
MEHMET BERK BALÇIK
Submitted to the Graduate School of Social Sciences in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Sabancı University Autumn 2008
FORMATIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF LANGUAGE REGIMES: TURKEY, A CASE STUDY
APPROVED BY:
Prof. Dr. ġerif Mardin ………. (Dissertation Supervisor)
Prof. Dr. AyĢe Öncü ………. (Member of the Thesis Committee)
Asst. Prof. Dr. Ayhan Akman ………. (Member of the Thesis Committee)
Prof. Dr. Sabri Sayarı ……….
(Member of the Thesis Jury)
Prof. Dr. AyĢegül Baykan ……….
(Member of the Thesis Jury)
© Mehmet Berk Balçık 2009
iii ABSTRACT
FORMATIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF LANGUAGE REGIMES: TURKEY, A CASE STUDY
Mehmet Berk Balçık Ph.D., Political Science, 2008 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. ġerif Mardin
Keywords: language regimes, ideology, Turkey, globalization
There are two main aims of this dissertation: to present a legal and ideological history of the formation of the language regime in Turkey in the Republican period; and to analyze its transformation in the post-1980 era.
A language regime is defined in this dissertation as a de jure or de facto regulation of the linguistic behavior, in its content or in its status, within a space of communicative action, such as that of a nation-state or a speech group. In other words, a language regime is a system of the governance of the linguistic domain within a defined political territory by planning and employment of particular policies. Language ideologies, on the other hand, are inseparable aspects of the formulation and operation of the language regimes. Such a conception of language enables an analysis of language as a domain of social and political power.
In the first part of the dissertation, the history of the language politics in the Republican Turkey is analyzed through the concept of language regime, and the ideological repercussions pertaining to the designation and practicing of these regimes are assessed.
The second part concentrates on the changes in post-1980s, within a globalizing environment, in the broadcasting policies and the ways in which language regimes have been transformed. Controversies over two basic processes have been analyzed in this part: the commercialization of the audio-visual domain, and the developments concerning broadcasting in minority languages.
iv ÖZET
DĠL REJĠMLERĠNĠN OLUġUMU VE DÖNÜġÜMÜ: TÜRKĠYE ÖRNEĞĠ
Mehmet Berk Balçık Doktora, Siyaset Bilimi, 2008 DanıĢman: Prof. Dr. ġerif Mardin
Anahtar Sözcükler: dil rejimleri, ideoloji, Türkiye, küreselleĢme
Bu tez, iki ana amaç doğrultusunda tasarlanmıĢtır: Türkiye‘de Cumhuriyet dönemi dil rejiminin kuruluĢunun hukuki ve ideolojik bir tarihini sunmak ve bu rejimin 1980 sonrası dönemdeki dönüĢümlerini incelemek.
Dil rejimi bu tezin kapsamında, belli bir iletiĢimsel alan içinde, ki bu alan bir ulus-devletin hüküm sürdüğü dil evreni ya da bir dil topluluğu olabilir, dilsel davranıĢların yasal ya da fiili olarak düzenlenmesi Ģeklinde tanımlanmıĢtır. Bir baĢka deyiĢle, dil rejimleri belirli bir siyasal alan içinde dil evreninin yönetilme biçimlerini tanımlar. Dil ideolojileri bu rejimlerin biçimlendirilmesinde, organizasyonunda ve uygulanmasında ayrılmaz unsurlar olarak ortaya çıkar. Dilin bu Ģekilde kavramsallaĢtırılması, dilin bir toplumsal ve siyasal iktidar alanı olarak incelenmesine olanak sağlar.
Tezin ilk bölümünde Cumhuriyet döneminin dil politikaları, dil rejimleri kavramı çerçevesinde değerlendirilmiĢtir. Türkçeyi tek geçerli dil kılan dil rejiminin ideolojik arka planı ile birlikte, bu rejimin kuruluĢu ve iĢletilmesi sırasında türeyen söylemler de analizin kapsamı içine alınmıĢtır.
Tezin ikinci kısmı bu dil rejiminin 1980 sonrası dönemde ne tür itirazlarla ve meydan okumalarla karĢılaĢtığını incelemektedir. Temel olarak odaklanılan konu yayın politikalarındaki dönüĢümdür. Bu dönüĢümün iki temel ayağı vardır. Birincisi, 1990‘larda geliĢen, özel radyo ve televizyon kanallarının ortaya çıkıĢı, diğer ise, azınlık dillerinde yapılacak yayınlarla ilgili olarak beliren tartıĢmalardır.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis has been a major element of my life for the last six years. The formulation of the thesis‘ structure and the accomplishment of its writing has been a real challenge. Many people have been helpful and supportive and without their presence I would probably have to spend a six more years on the work. I feel obliged to acknowledge their contributions.
My Ph.D. work began in 2001 at Sabancı University (SU). After deciding to pursue my career in political science, AyĢe Kadıoğlu helped me much to make my mind in choosing SU and time has proved her right on that there was no better place in Turkey to do so. Her and Hasan Bülent Kahraman‘s courses were useful in closing the gaps in my political scientific background. The discussions that we made it their lectures have their marks in many pages of this thesis.
A Ph.D. thesis, I have learnt by experience, is nothing without a qualified body of thesis committee, and I had the chance to consult and receive advice from some of the best social scientists of Turkey.
ġerif Mardin, a guide not just for me but also for a couple of generations of academicians, has been a wonderful advisor with his experience, insight and kindliness throughout the study. It is good to know that my work has his approval. It was a great pleasure to have the opportunity to benefit from his existence at the university and as my advisor.
AyĢe Öncü, an old teacher of mine from the years at Boğaziçi University‘s Sociology Department, was here again at SU, this time as a member of my thesis committee. She kindly accepted to help me in my thesis and my thesis could not become what it is now without her contributions. Despite her busy schedules, she was constructive for both the content and the theory of this work. I owe her much.
Ayhan Akman‘s friendly approach, I always felt, was indispensible in my self-confidence concerning the completion of this study. His wide-range of interests led me to consider possible paths that I could follow in order to enhance the theoretical implications of my thesis.
Sabri Sayarı, although I had the delight to know at a later stage, was also very thoughtful and helpful. He helped me to complete the last phases and to develop a better dissertation.
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SU would not be the same for me had I not met my Ph.D. fellows. We spent long times, and for not only discussing Arendt and fascism, with Tuba Kancı, Seda Domaniç, Fadime BoztaĢ, Uygur Aksu, Erkan Doğan and Ahmet OkumuĢ. To share the joy and the problems of completing a Ph.D. at SU and in Turkey with them made all easier. I thank them all.
Besides, there has been a crowded group of young social scientists that I had the pleasure to know at Yıldız Technical University (YTU), where I have been teaching for the last five years. My colleagues at the department of Human and Social Sciences were incredibly helpful at every stage of this adventure and made my life easier at times of trouble. I am indebted for their concern and understanding.
AyĢegül Baykan, head of my department at YTU, probably deserves one of the greatest appreciations. She has been a wonderful mentor to me since our days in Koç University. Her insistence and belief in me was most motivating. She painstakingly proofread my drafts, made her comments on almost every aspect of the thesis and kindly accepted to take part in the jury. She had faith in my work more than I did.
I had the chance to receive help from two prominent names in the field of language politics. Harold Schiffman and Florian Coulmas, whose works significantly shaped my debates, considerately responded my emails and answered my questions.
The private history of this thesis involves people very dear to me. Can Açıksöz and Zeynep Korkman, my closest friends since undergraduate times, have been the most critical and inspiring sources of my intellectual enthusiasm. My father and mother have always been supportive and respectful to what I decided for myself and for my future, despite their occasional disagreements.
My beloved wife, Elif, came into my life while I just started writing this thesis. She was always supportive; she bore with all my laziness and grievances. She offered every help to ease the difficulties and she made all troubles seem tolerable. And, only days after my thesis was approved, we have been cherished by the arrival of our twins, Defne Ġda and Ali Çınar. Their coming was an additional motivation for me. I am glad that at least they will not need to endure my writing a Ph.D. thesis.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ... 1
CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: LANGUAGE REGIME ... 11
2.1 Theoretical Challenges to Traditional Language Planning ... 11
2.2 New Approaches to LPP Research ... 17
2.3 Revival of LPP Research in Connection with Globalization ... 18
2.4 A History of the Concept of ―Language Regime‖ ... 31
2.5 Language Regime as Symbolic Domination ... 38
2.6 Language Regimes and the Theoretical Framework of the Dissertation ... 51
CHAPTER 3 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES IN TURKEY ... 61
3.1 Introduction ... 61
3.2 Before the Republic ... 63
CHAPTER 4 REPUBLICAN REGIME OF LANGUAGE ... 85
4.1 Lausanne Treaty and the Population Exchange of 1922-1923 ... 88
4.2 Republican Thrust to Radical Nationalization - 1923 Amendments in the Constitution ... 91
4.3 1924 Constitution ... 92
4.4 Takrir-i Sükun period and Authoritarianism ... 93
4.5 Eastern Reform Plan ... 95
4.6 Civil society at work ... 97
4.7 Governmental bodies takes action about Language Usage ... 100
4.8 Religion and Language ... 103
4.9 The New Script, the New Language ... 104
4.10 The Army and Language ... 109
4.11 Economy in Turkish ... 110
4.12 Modernization, Citizenship and Language ... 111
4.13 Expansion of the Republican Regime of language ... 113
4.14 After the One-Party Rule ... 115
4.15 Between Two Military Interventions ... 118
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4.17 A different Turkish for Broadcasting ... 130
4.18 1990s: Insurgence of Linguistic Diversity ... 132
4.19 The EU Relations: Love and Hate ... 136
4.20 Municipalities as the Guardians of the Language ... 145
CHAPTER 5 THE HISTORICAL LINGUISTIC MAP OF TURKEY ... 153
CHAPTER 6 CHANGING LANGUAGE REGIMES ... 166
6.1 Broadcasting as a Major Domain of a Language Regime ... 167
6.2 Changing Nature of Broadcasting ... 176
6.3 Broadcasting and Minority Languages ... 193
CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION ... 219 CHAPTER 8 APPENDIX 1 ... 230 CHAPTER 9 APPENDIX 2 ... 233 CHAPTER 10 APPENDIX 3 ... 237 CHAPTER 11 APPENDIX 4 ... 240 CHAPTER 12 APPENDIX 5 ... 249 CHAPTER 13 APPENDIX 6 ... 252 CHAPTER 14 BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 258
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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Tables
Table 1 - Numbers of newspapers according their language in 1909 ... 84
Table 2 – List of languages in the censuses. ... 157
Table 3 – The categorization of languages in the 1965 census ... 158
Table 4 - Percent distribution of language/ethnic groups in Turkey ... 162
Figures Figure 1 – Posters on Turkish prepared by the Turkish Armed Forces in 2007. ... 149
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ABBREVIATIONS
AKP : Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party) ANAP : Anavatan Partisi (Motherland Party)
AP : Adalet Partisi (Justice Party)
CHP : Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People‘s Party)
DİB : Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı (the Presidency of Religious Affairs) DGM : Devlet Güvenlik Mahkemesi (State Security Court)
DP : Demokrat Parti (Democratic Party)
DPT : Devlet Planlama Teşkialtı (State Planning Organization) DYP : Doğru Yol Partisi (True Path Party)
ECSC : European Coal and Steel Community EU : The European Union
HEP : Halkın Emek Partisi (People‘s Labor Party)
İTC : İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (the Committee of Union and Progress) LPP : Language policy and planning
MGK : Milli Güvenlik Kurulu (National Security Council) MHP : Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Action Party) PKK : Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers‘ Party) PSB : Public service broadcaster
RTÜK : Radyo ve Televizyon Üst Kurulu (Supreme Board of Radio and Television) SHP : Sosyal Demokrat Halkçı Parti (Social Democratic People‘s Party)
TDK : Türk Dil Kurumu (Turkish Language Institution)
TRT : Türkiye Radyo Televizyon Kurumu (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation) WWII : The World War II
1 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Kroskrity marks that various debates on language ―serve to keep us aware of the status of language as a primary site of political process and of the discursive mediation of those very activities and events we recognize as political‖ (2000a, p. 1). A Turkish version of constant push towards such an awareness is exactly what guided this dissertation.
In the last decades, public sphere in Turkey has become an arena where language fighters are chanting and hunting. Language has always been a hot issue to talk and write on, even before the Republican period. For more than a century, the cultured circles experienced confrontations about language. Major disputes have emerged between supporters of Arabic vs. Latin orthography, elite vs. simple language, moderate or living vs. pure Turkish, ―progressive-nationalist‖ vs. ―conservative-nationalist‖ styles, etc.
However, contemporary debates have developed to become significantly different. For the majority of the participants of the debates, the main concern today is the alleged decline of Turkish. The fear, to be exact, of losing the language that has long been accepted as the ―flag‖ of the national culture has been provoked with increasing use of English in various domains, from education to public communication and consumer culture. The phenomenon of the ―corruption‖ of Turkish by ―unconscious‖ and ―careless‖ users has been equally effective. However, for a smaller number of citizens, mostly Kurds, the issue has been rather about being able to speak, use or learn their mother language. The fire was not fed only by those who were simply debating in
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public, but many legal regulations and laws concerning various aspects of language use have been made, ranging from the banning of shop names in non-Turkish languages to the granting limited rights for learning or broadcasting in Kurdish.
In summary, there are concerns about both the status and the corpus of the claimed languages. Status problems, for Turkish, have been interpreted as the language is losing ground to English and Kurdish in many aspects of cultural and social life, which were supposed to be conducted in Turkish. For the Kurdish side, the issue of status is rather a political motive and the agenda is quite different.
Problems of corpus for Turkish is also with the intrusion of English words and idioms into the language itself, but also with the increasing visibility of non-standard varieties of Turkish with respect to the popularization of the mass media. As for Kurdish, its diverse varieties and the question of standardization, again, exhibit distinct characteristics.
Each of the discursive elements of these public debates has been derived from a complicated political background, of which construction was primarily performed by the Republican state. As Kroskrity proposes, recent debates on language in Turkey are considered in this study as great opportunities for the exposition of the political that is intrinsic to language.
For an authentic perspective to analyze language politics in Turkey, one concept, language regime is employed as the core theoretical base of this dissertation. A second one, language ideology, a widely debated, well-known notion, has also been utilized in order to complement the conceptual framework. This framework and its further implications are explained in the next chapter. In this introductory chapter, I will try to present the contributions that this dissertation might offer in order to understand the historical and ideological aspects of language politics in Turkey. I will also give the outline of the work.
To be specific, this thesis aims at discovering the dynamics of the relationship between language regimes and language ideologies through an analysis of the formation of the Turkish official language regime. This discovery will be enhanced with the examinations of the practical consequences of the language regime with respect to speakers of languages other than Turkish, and of its discursive consequences within the
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public sphere with respect to the perception and conception of Kurdish, as a minority language.
Many studies have been published recently on the construction of the national identity in Turkey, and the way in which language was incorporated in this construction.1 However, these studies are exclusively dedicated to the first decades of the Republic, as they are parts of a recently growing scholarly enterprise to enlighten the political and cultural transformations related to the new era.
In some of the studies on the establishment of the modern language politics in Turkey, the common approach has been to concentrate on instrumental aspects. Questions of how language has been used, changed, modified or reformed in order to supplement the nationalizationist/ modernizationist practices have been in the center of some researches (cf. Çolak, 2004; and Aydıngün & Aydıngün, 2004). In other researches, the nationalist nature of the Language Reform was scrutinized. ġavkay, for example, aims to present the political dimensions of the Turkish Language Reform, especially those that went beyond the mere establishment of a national language for a new nation-state. He questions the ways in which the Reform had been associated with the Kemalists‘ understanding of nationality (ġavkay, 2002, pp. 16-17).
There is only one study, which could be considered as a social scientific endeavor, on the language politics of the later Republican decades (Doğançay-Aktuna, 2004). Doğançay-Aktuna examines the politics of language since the Tanzimat era (the Ottoman reform period of 1839 to 1876), but her analyses are rather formed by conventional perspectives and ideas. In her work, she reproduces the classical themes of the Republican discourse on the issue of language reform and ―its success‖. Most strikingly, her story of the language policy in Turkey does not reflect on any image of the minority languages.
She states that her article has a two-fold purpose: ―to familiarize the reader with the most important language planning effort in Turkey, the Turkish Language Reform … and to discuss current language problems and recent Turkish language planning attempts on Turkish.‖ (p. 5). Whereas the article is titled Language Planning in Turkey:
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See ġavkay (2002), Sadoğlu (2003), Çolak (2004), Aytürk (2004), and Aydıngün and Aydıngün (2004).
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Yesterday and Today, her theoretical and ideological framework apparently has no space for questioning the re-configuration of the non-Turkish linguistic situation in Turkey by the Republican state‘s language planning. Her approach, in fact shared by many, takes Turkish as the only legitimate and proper language in Turkey to be discussed in such a presentation. In this dissertation, I aim, inter alia, at explaining how this conception of language hierarchy has become so dominant that it also informs academic studies.
As it will be unfolded in the next chapters, Turkish language politics were not only about reshaping the content and the functions of Turkish language, but they were also about the governance of non-Turkish languages. So, to put it another way, the exploration here focuses not only on the constitution of a particular variety of Turkish as the standard and official language of the nation, but also emphasize how other languages and linguistic varieties are excluded, both practically and discursively, outside the legitimate domain of linguistic action in the public sphere.
What conditioned this dissertation has been the examination of the larger system of language politics, with an analysis of recent developments. Nevertheless, a historical background is also considered as a necessity.
The new Republican state acquired a more substantial legitimacy and power that were absent in the last century of the Ottoman Empire. The Republic was ruled by educated elites who had uncompromising faith in positivism for achieving development and social change. Therefore, they conceived language quite differently from the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. This is not say that linguistic matters was completely irrelevant to the culture of the Imperial Palace, but the Republican state introduced practices and narratives of language politics that were far more radical. The language had been constructed as a new category; it was nationalized along with other cultural aspects of the society. People, who were just speaking the language, were confronted with ―the national language‖, which became a sign of loyalty, obedience, unity, and integrity. On the other side, other people who were just speaking ―other languages‖, too, were confronted with the national language, which indexed their own tongue as a symbol of diversity, subversion, treason and betrayal.
In that sense, the language politics of the Republican period is beyond an instrumentalization of language for political ends. It is not simply repressive, either, as
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it banned the use of a language while prioritizing another. There are also productive aspects of the language regime and practices in Turkey. The Republican language regime not only denied some languages, but also constructed their status as a non-language (as in the case of Kurdish). It did not only exclude the provincial dialects of the national language, but created a new ―high‖ Turkish (in the process of the Language Reform) while the claim was to create a language that would be of Turkish essence. Last, but not the least, the Turkish language regime constructed and framed the codes of legitimate talk on language. Creation of a moral code of language and spread of it to all citizens resulted in the emergence of a civil society, which would consider Turkish language as one its essential elements. A counter consequence, however, was the emergence of a significant number of discontent citizens, who claimed their own, separate identity through their own language, while facilitating the very ideological principles that the regime produced.
Although the main proposition of the thesis will be that the official language regime of Turkish state has always been to single out Turkish as the one and only legitimate language, this is not to deny that there have been fluctuations in time in the consistency of the regime. These fluctuations has ranged from forwarding a radical version of pure Turkish in the 1930s, constructed within the framework of the Dil Devrimi (variously translated as Language Reform or Revolution), to shifting the focus more on the uses of traditional and elite Ottoman Turkish in the 1950s when the Demokrat Parti (Democratic Party, DP henceforth) was in power, and to the approval of the implementation of English in many universities as the language of instruction after 1980s. Therefore, the Republican language regime has gone through considerable changes, although the principality of Turkish has never lost power, at least for the majority of the citizens.
The Turkish official language regime has faced serious challenges by the social and cultural transformations particularly in the 1990s. There have been three concurrent and interrelated developments with respect to the sources of these challenges. First, the social structure has been transfigured through urbanization and commercialization of the cultural spheres. Second, distinctive processes inherent in globalization, such as the expansion of economical, political and cultural patterns, considerably threatened the assumed monopoly of the state in determining the cultural dynamics of the population.
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And third, the rise of politics of identity brought about the empowerment of identity claims that endangered the presumed integrity of the nation and its cultural and linguistic representations of homogeneity. So, accompanying the recent debates on languages, there have occurred major social and cultural transformations.
To explore both the establishment of the domain of language politics and its ideological implications, as noted above, a core concept, language regime, and a complementary one, language ideology, will be utilized.
The literature of linguistic anthropology has recently concentrated on how particular language ideologies produce particular discourses on language and its use, and particular practices of them (Schieffelin, Woolard, & Kroskrity, 1998). This dissertation aims to explain how certain language policies and practices of linguistic manipulation guide and inform particular language ideologies. That is, it tries to examine the opposite direction of the ideology-regime link. Studies of language ideologies generally excavate ideological underpinnings of certain metalinguistic discourses and practices. Here, the object of analysis is rather the ways in which nation-state politics of language frame linguistic ideologies and how the hegemony of the official discourses of language are established over the perceptions and conceptions of languages in Turkey in general, and of Kurdish as a minority language, in particular. It is intended to present that such a domination or colonization of minds with respect to languages not only operates through a rigorous indoctrination via national and compulsory education and the control over mass communication institutions, but also through the very policies, practices and formations of legitimate and illegitimate domains of language use.
Therefore, the thesis is comprised of three different levels of analysis. The first level focuses on how the domain of language is incorporated as into a project of total political and social transformation an essential dimension. This examination investigates the Turkish modernizationist project of westernization, of which two main pillars has been nationalization and secularization, and its articulation of language as both its medium and instrument. The end result of this articulation has been the construction of a language regime that encompassed the officialization of a particular variety of Turkish in all public domains, and the discouragement and/or the legal exclusion of other varieties of Turkish and non-Turkish languages. As a part of this
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analysis, a short examination of the census results will be given in order to assess to what extent the regime was successful in leveling the linguistic differences in Turkey.
The second level of analysis is based on the explanation of the changes and variations within this language regime with respect to social and cultural changes. At this stage, the transformation of the social structures and emerging of new channels of information flows are brought under inquiry, such as globalization, urbanization, and commercialization of the information networks that were once under the monopolistic control of the state.
The third level of analysis concentrates on the development of particular discourses about Kurdish. The survey at this level assesses the discursive frameworks in the public arena about the Kurdish language(s). Since Kurdish has not been controlled and cultivated under a state authority, as Turkish has been in the 20th century, the former lacks a unified, standard form. This lack of homogeneity has been frequently overemphasized by the Turkish nationalists, to the point of arguing that there is no language as Kurdish. However, for those who have been in favor of linguistic and cultural freedoms of non-Turkish speakers, the problem is about democratization and human rights, rather than about the justifications for realities of linguistics. Thus, there have developed particular frameworks of discourses on Kurdish that are distinct and competing in the public sphere.
Having presented the conceptual flow of the dissertation, the outline of the chapters and section follows below.
The next, second theoretical chapter will explore the conceptual repercussions pertaining to the concepts of language regime and language ideology. First, a brief review of the traditional research on language policy and planning is presented. Following, enriched by the theoretical contributions of Foucault and Bourdieu, the post-modern critique to the classical language policy research and the evolution of the concept of language regime are reviewed. Last, the theoretical implications (together with language ideology) and the possibilities of explanation promised by the concept are discussed.
From the third chapter on, the empirical research is presented. The chapter starts with a short history of the pre-Ottoman and Ottoman legacies of language politics. Especially the last century of the Empire is considered as important, and is detailed
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accordingly, since most of the basic ideological principles of the Republican practices were formed in that period. The formation and the practices of modernity in the Ottoman Empire are deemed critically significant for explaining the Republican politics.
In the fourth chapter, the Republican official policies and legal regulations will be analyzed. Regulations, with actual practices, and ideological implications and outcomes, amount to the subsistence of a language regime. The formation and the development of the Republican language regime are analyzed. The main axis is formed by the chronological history of regulations that affected languages of the country, in one way or another. However, the discourses and ―realities‖ generated are also evaluated. Through the notion of language regime, the relationship between the political and the linguistic spheres in the Turkish case will be assessed.
The fifth chapter is devoted to a survey of the changes in the linguistic populations in Turkey. Considered as a sign of the effectiveness of the language regime of the top-down modernization in Turkey, the levels of linguistic assimilation are assessed based on the data from the censuses and other relevant researches.
Chapter 6 continues the history of the language regime in Turkey, now with a specific focus on the regulations of and public debate about broadcasting. Mass media in general, and television and radio broadcasting in particular have become the field of language battles, especially since 1990s. On the one hand, private radio and TV channels have flourished. They rapidly and substantially commercialized a domain that belonged to the state before. The profound changes emerged with commercialization of audio-visual domains inevitably changed the way language has been conceived with respect to broadcasting.2 Moreover, the intrusion of English was unleashed under the conditions of less-control by the state and of profit maximization.
Broadcasting in a language other than Turkish was considered a political taboo for more than half a century. This taboo has been recently challenged not only by the technological developments that enabled transnational broadcastings that render the official language policies on broadcasting mostly invalid. More importantly the Turkish governments have experienced a two-way pressure from both inside with the demands
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Öncü (2000) discusses various aspects of commercialization in the sphere of television. Öncü‘s article has been a major inspiration in the formulation of this dissertation‘s case study.
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of cultural and linguistic rights, claimed especially by Kurds, and from outside, particularly from the EU that mandates the implementation of a certain level of multiculturalist policies to become a member. Finally, some of the languages other than Turkish were broadcasted on Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (Türkiye Radyo Televizyon Kurumu, TRT henceforth) after being defined as ―the traditional languages and dialects that are used by the Turkish citizens in their daily lives‖ instead of being titled as ―the minority language‖.
Since 2000, the media coverage on the issue of broadcasting in non-Turkish language has been vast. In a context of abundance of speech on language, some regularities with respect to the representations of particular language ideologies have appeared. In the last eight years, there have been reformulations and explicit manifestations of how Turkish and non-Turkish language has been conceived. Therefore, 2000s has been a valuable period for the excavation of language ideologies that have considerable effect in the public arena. Chapter 6, then, will be the part where these language ideologies are presented and analyzed.
The controversy on language in Turkey in the last two decades has been best demonstrated in the field of broadcasting. Spitulnik remarks ―[t]he place of powerful institutions such as mass media … in the construction and the maintenance of such linguistic hegemonies has been the subject of growing attention over the past decade‖ (Spitulnik, 1998, pp. 164-165). In this sense, this chapter might be considered as a study on the Turkish case of how mass media has become a primary field of conflicts on language politics.
The conclusion chapter will be an evaluation of the findings of the empirical research above. First, the following questions will be answered. To what extent has the theoretical framework that is constructed with the critical notions of language regime and language ideology helped us to understand the political nature of language in Turkey? What are its advantages, and what has it enabled us to uncover? Secondly, based on the categorizations of regimes by Pool and Laitin (see below) and the review of the history of the Turkish language regime, its comparative position with respect to other regimes will be explained. And finally, more theoretical questions will be discussed, such as how language regime and ideology could be related to each other and
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how the case study of Turkey helped us to advance the conceptual understanding of politics of language.
11 CHAPTER 2
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: LANGUAGE REGIME
The following chapter introduces the theoretical framework of this study. Language regime is presented here as the core concept and it is explained how the concept could be utilized to analyze the formation of and the transformation of the language politics in Turkey.
In the next section, the theoretical and empirical developments that transformed the studies of language politics are presented. After that, the notion of ―language regime‖ is introduced and further conceptual implications that the notion offers are assessed.
2.1 Theoretical Challenges to Traditional Language Planning
It is widely accepted that language, as a social phenomenon, is political. Its political nature derives from that it is a social and historical construct, which marks cultural borders among genders, statuses and communities, and that it is a means to control or maintain the access to knowledge, hence to power. Language is also always politically contextualized because it has always been incorporated into the power play of politics.
Modernity, by substantially transforming the ways in which the political sphere is organized and operated, has changed the political nature of language (Neustupny, 2006).
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Modernity, especially with its urge for scientific understanding and control, turned languages into means of direct cultural and political change and discipline. Language has become one of the essential dimensions of modern forms of power (Wright, 2004 and 2007). ―The standardization and the spread of Western European vernaculars‖ (Wright, 2007, p. 165) were guided and accompanied by a serious of parallel and consequential processes: the spread of printing and print capitalism (Anderson, 1991), the formation of the modern state institutions (Wright, 2004), the undertaking of language as an object of science and a resource for intellectual and political discourses (Crowley, 1996; Neis, 2006; and Patten, 2006). The highest level of authority and power in the modern era, the nation-state has taken the ―problem of language‖ seriously from the very beginning and manipulated languages and language uses in the way to national identity construction (Barbour & Carmichael, 2000; and Joseph J. E., 2006). The western European nation-states transferred their experiences in language and culture administration to the colonies, as well, and created a colonial political culture in their imperial domains. As nationalism and modern-state formations are reproduced in non-European geographies, so were the corresponding politics of language.
In 1960s and 1970s, the political interest in language policy and planning (LPP) was becoming globalized. In the center of the interest were the emerging nation-states, mostly established during the rapid decolonization process in Africa and Asia. There were two main sides of these planning attempts. On the one side were the political elites of these countries who inherited the European ideological legacies of state control of the linguistic domains. The other front of language planning process was formed by the language planners from the academic circles, who were, infused with the enthusiasm of modernization theories, believed that these new political settings promised a fertile domain in which linguistic and sociolinguistic theories would be assessed and put into practice.3
Some issues were especially attractive. The choice of the official language was one of the main problems. Most decolonized polities were sociolinguistically complicated: there were the languages of the colonialists; the multilingual context of the
3
For an in-depth review of the history of language planning studies, see Blommaert (1996) and Wright (2004).
13
society and a set of linguistic power relations pertaining to ethnic and class distinctions. Standardization and modernization of local languages were other hotspots, since a ―modern‖ language was expected to satisfy the needs of a ―modern‖ nation-state and country. The urge for language modernization was exhibited best in setting up educational language policies for the now-liberated members of these nations, in order to close the ―gap‖ in the race for modernization.4
However, theories emerging in the last quarter of the 20th century attacked fiercely on these types of Westernizationist/modernizationist missionary attempts. The critique of the modernization theories in general were derived from dual sources of deconstructivism in the western political theory and the theories of post-colonialism. The tides of this critique also influenced classical LPP theory and practice. Sue Wright, in her review of language planning studies, similarly emphasizes that the concern for the relationship between language and power relations was derived from the Critical Theory and postmodernism (2004, pp. 165-172).
The strong belief in the evolutionary progress of human societies that would bind them all, in the end, in the condition of modernity was among the pillars LPP research with modernizationist aspirations. Modernity was defined by the economical, political and cultural standards of the Western societies, of which national citizenship and modern bureaucratic formation of the state apparatus were held to be essential. Glyn Williams similarly argues that "… language planning emerged side by side with the theory of modernization which not only was closely integrated with a specific theoretical perspective - structural functionalism - but also involved a specific conception of the world. This world view involved dividing states into the modern and the traditional." (Williams, 1992, p. 124; cited in Blommaert J. , 1996).5
Criticism of conceptual categorization of ―the modern‖ and ―the traditional‖ has also been coupled by the critique of modernity itself. Many scholars followed the Frankfurt School‘s disillusionment with modernity and the Enlightenment, especially
4
See Spolsky and Hult (2008) for a collection of empirical and theoretical essays on how educational language and language cultivation has been major issues for nation-states.
5
For a further analysis of the theoretical foundations of the classical LPP studies, see Richard J. Watts (2001), especially pages 297-298.
14
that of Adorno and Horkheimer. Postmodern theories interrogated the institutions and technologies of modernity, and questioned to what extent modernity, as a discourse and practice, fulfilled its promise for the well-being and the development of humanity; and what it can further contribute (Wright, 2004).
Within the re-assessment of modernity, via its method and its content, none of the modern social and political formations were left out, including nationalism and language.
With respect to nationalism, a theoretical deconstruction of the modernist nationalist utopia was launched by those who successfully interpreted nationalism as an invention of modernity, rather than a transcendental historical ideal (Gellner E. , 1983; Hobsbawm E. J., 1993; Anderson, 1991; Kroskrity P. V., 2000b).
However, for the issue of language, the deconstructivist attacks proved more subversive. The strongest criticism to the understanding of language as an object be studied, categorized and planned, appeared within anthropology, especially studies of linguistic anthropology. The nature of anthropological research and theory challenges established conceptions of social dynamics. Kroskrity identifies that there has been an increasing awareness in anthropological perspective to complement the microanalysis of language with ―an understanding of how such patterns might be related to political-economic macroprocesses‖ (2000a, p. 2). He describes how the 20th
century linguistics mostly dealt with an ―amputated‖ language, that is language removed from its social and political context and he marks the theoretical re-assessments to restore ―the relevance of contextual factors‖ (p. 5). Kroskrity refers, for example, to Irvine where she launches a socio-cultural emphasis as she concentrates on ―the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests‖ (Irvine, 1989, p. 255; cited in p. 5).
A series of reconsideration has also emerged about how language has become an instrument of politics and science. Among other philosophers, Foucault ―acknowledge[d] the significance for modernity of the construction of language as a separate realm in the 17th century‖ (Foucault M. , 2002; cited in Makoni & Pennycook, 2005, p. 145). Bauman and Briggs similarly questioned the modern establishment of language as a discrete domain, and asked ―how language came into being‖ (2003, p. 7). Mühlhäusler joined this track with his claim that ―the notion of a ‗language‘ is a recent
15
culture-specific notion associated with the rise of European nation-states and the Enlightenment. The notion of ‗a language‘ makes little sense in most traditional societies.‖ (Mühlhäusler, 2000, p. 358).
Similarly, Blommaert notes, language is a key ingredient of modernity and thus a rather recent construct (Blommaert, 2006, p. 512). He adds, ―… but it has become the most widespread view of language both in popular and in scientific circles. Linguistics has contributed in no small degree to the cultural construction of language in general as a stable, contextless individual mental object, and language and educational policies as well as larger nation-building programs have been deeply influenced by this ideology‖ (ibid.).
On the front historians and sociologists, on the other hand, approaches to the linguistic dimensions of modernity, nationalism and the political. Anderson (1991) focused on this issue in relation with the emergence of nationalism and modern politics of language. He unearthed the association between nation building and language construction. Likewise, Blommaert confirmed that standardization of languages has been tied to the rise of nation-states and the concurrent project of modernity (1996). Glyn Williams (1992, p. 128) described how, as a part of that project, language has been situated within an evolutionary view of progress, which is itself a central idea of the modernist thought.
Among all, Bourdieu stands significantly distinctive in ―understanding and exposing the role of language in power relations‖ (Wright, 2004, p. 11).
Like Foucault, Bourdieu was also interested in how modern power relations are established, and through which dynamics they are maintained or subverted. In his analysis, the notion of ―symbolic power‖ is located at the center, defined as the power in constructing reality (1991, p. 166). He further elaborates on ―reality‖, where he echoes Foucault‘s truth regimes6
: reality normalizes the social taxonomy of the social inequality (a process of legitimization of domination), naturalizes new configurations of
6
For Foucault, what is called ―truth‖ is not independent of power: ―… there are truths that correlate with modes of government. The production of truth is 'not the production of true utterances but the establishment of domains, or ‗regimes of truth‘, in which the practice of true and false can be made at once ordered and pertinent' (Foucault M. , 1981, p. 9; quoted in Simmons, 1995, p. 44).
16
power relations, and it subjugates the dominated. In this sense, symbolic power imposes systems of classifications, or hierarchies. His approach has challenged those of linguists with an understanding of language as a transcendental grammatical reality. Bourdieu criticized, for example, Chomsky‘s theory of universal language for ignoring the economic and social conditions of language and ―social laws of construction‖, and hence, for masking the ―social genesis of language‖ (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 44). A categorization of language, which had become of historical importance in the science of linguistics, Saussure‘s langue vs. parole, could not escape Bourdieu‘s critique, either.7 Bourdieu emphasized the political unification of ―a‖ language in the formation of modern official languages and during the incorporation of the vernaculars into the language of the political authority. Saussure‘s langue as a category actually corresponds to official languages, according to Bourdieu.
Subsequently, Bourdieu reversed one of the classical and popular assumptions about official languages and languages of the people. According to him, it is the politics of official language that has constructed the ―linguistic community‖ as a ―group of people who use the same system of linguistic signs‖; and that such a construction has been a precondition ―for economic production and even for symbolic domination‖ (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 45).8
Bourdieu‘s critical approach has inspired many scholars who reviewed, not only the actual relationships of politics and language, but also theoretical orientations that have had framed studies of those relationships.
7
On langue and parole, Sanders reminds that ―the former refers to the potential linguistic system which resides in the mind of all members of a speech community, and waits to be activated in parole, in individual utterances, or acts of speech‖ (2004, pp. 4-5).
8
Bourdieu‘s relating language and economics sounds is similar to Gellner‘s idea of establishment of horizontal social relationships via institutions of education and relations of capitalist production (Gellner E. , 1983).
17
2.2 New Approaches to LPP Research
The new theoretical influence on ―traditional language policy and language planning‖ (Wright, 2007, p. 164) has been more than a mere criticism. Hornberger marks that critical and postmodern theories have made their way into LPP research, ―infusing new perspectives and emphases‖ (2006, p. 24). LPP research and practice itself has become an object theoretical attention. Hornberger points out that Cooper (1989) and Tollefson (1991) were first to critically revise LPP. Cooper has proposed a descriptive function for the field of LPP, while Tollefson has sought to ―contribute to a theory of language planning that locates the field within social theory‖ (1991, p. 8; cited in Hornberger, 2006, p. 24).
These new perspectives led the way to the new conceptual tools, as well. New concepts prioritized some of the issues like locality, diversity, subjectification and objectification, power as a dispersed network rather than an application of domination from above, reproduction and subversion of/through power relations, etc. In these new orientations, focus shifted to explain how ―language is employed to produce, maintain and change the social relations of power and to permit the domination of some people over others‖ (Wright, 2004, p. 167).
One of the flourishing new concepts has been ―language regime‖. This concept, with its underpinnings and promises for the analysis of politics of language will be discussed in the sections below. Before that, there is a need to describe the new world order within which these new conceptualizations thrived.
The new theoretical approaches were coupled with the revival and reformation of the field of LPP within the discipline of sociolinguistics. For Hornberger, this resurgence was due to two factors: ―the imperious spread of English and other global languages, and reciprocally the alarming loss and endangerment of indigenous and small language communities world-wide‖ (2006, p. 24). There have been various forces of globalization, both from above and from below, which challenged established systems of politics of language.
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2.3 Revival of LPP Research in Connection with Globalization
After 1980s, conceptualized under the notion of globalization9, the new world (dis)order generated many repercussions, which subverted particular aspects of the modern political order. Not as a primary cause but as a process in effect, globalization also entailed the creation of new areas of interest for LPP scholars. Equipped by the new theoretical orientations, scholars focused on a new set of linguistic problems, which were quite different from those they dealt with within the mind-set of post-colonial nation-state building (cf. Maurais & Morris, 2004). These new studies focus on four main sites of language political challenges.
First, the dissolution of Soviet Union resulted in the rapid formation of new republics, in which now language, as a political battleground, was to be reconfigured. Second, the European Union (EU), as one of the most ambitious and controversial political projects in history, has given rise to equally controversial linguistic problems. Within this project, multiculturalism and multilingualism have been presented as political ideals, but on the other hand, they posed more questions than they aimed to answer. Third, the problematic of linguistic matters, fueled by both ethnic nationalisms and immigrant communities, have forced the long established language regimes of national politics to be reformulated. Fourth, the global storming effect of English has become the top ranking linguistic issue in almost every country. Having implications for all the previous three areas of research, the domination of English has also been critical for the futures of national or sub-national languages. In the following sections, these four new spheres of study of language politics will be explored briefly.
2.3.1 The Aftermath of the Break of the Soviet Union
The fall of the Soviet Union was not only about the collapse of the communist system and a disappointment with the socialist utopia. It meant a radical change in the overall world power system, as well. To the interest of the scholars of LPP, the end of
9
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the Soviet era entailed re-establishment of the local politico-linguistic spheres due to the formation of new nation-states together with their attempts to form capitalist economies and liberal democratic parliamentary systems. In all these post-Soviet republics, nationalist ideologies eventually triumphed and language politics were nationalized in contrast with the ―imperialistic‖ politics of language in the Soviet Union (Hogan-Brun, 2005b, p. 369), which was based on the precedence of Russian.10
In his work on the changes in language regimes in globalizing environments, Coulmas refers to the developments in post-Soviet republics and shows how
―… language policies were adopted to expand the communicative space of the national languages at the expense of Russian, the language of the erstwhile power holders. Language laws passed from 1989 to 1995 were explicitly anti-Russian, restricting the use of Russian in spheres of regulated communication. By means of laws of citizenship and linguistic qualifying requirements, Russian was turned from the language of power that dominated all domains of higher communication into a stigmatized ethnic language.‖ (2005a, p. 8).
The geography directly affected by the fall of the Soviet Union was vast. Baltic and Black Sea coasts, Caucasia, and Central Asia have hosted new republics. The new sociolinguistic situations were multi-layered and complicated with officialized languages of the majorities; minority languages; lingering hegemony of Russian, linguistically, and of Russia, politically; and the lowered instrumental value of all these varieties in the international arenas of communication and competition with respect to English.
In the three states on the Baltic shores, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, national languages have been very strong symbols for cultural authenticity and ―central to the political life‖ (Hogan-Brun, 2005b, p. 368).11
In all three Republics, the status and the prestige of the national languages are secured at the constitutional level.
10
For a historical account of the Soviet language politics, and how language became a crucial symbol in the dissolution of the USSR, see Marshall (1996). Pavlenko (2006), too, presents the situation of Russian in the territory of the former Soviet Union.
11
For a comparative sociolinguistic analysis of the Baltic states, see Hogan-Brun (2005a).
20
In Lithuania, for example, ―the Lithuanian language is one of the key elements of ethnic and cultural originality of the Lithuanian state, an inseparable part of the nation‘s spiritual culture, the guarantee of national identity and survival, the language of state and individual, the language of the state and all spheres of public life.‖ (Smetoniene, 2003, p. 147; cited in Grumadiene, 2005).
As noted above, the Baltic states issued further laws that required the use (or the demonstration of competence to use) of the national languages in public contact. "[O]ther requirements covered the increase of teaching of the national language in all school systems, signage, and measures promoting the national languages in broadcasting, publication and public life." (Ozolins, 2003, p. 218). Nevertheless, there have been important problems with respect to the linguistic rights of the Russian minorities. Lithuania differs from the other two Republics in that the proportion of its main ethnic population was preserved during the post-WWII migrations from the other Soviet republics that were mainly initiated by the Soviet regime. Major demographic changes have taken place since then ―reducing the titular nationals to 61.3% of the population in Estonia by 1989 (down from a pre-war 88%) and to 52% in Latvia (down from 77%). Lithuanians‘ proportion remained largely unchanged, at 79.6% (down from 80.6%)" (ibid.). Ozolins reports that in Estonia and Latvia, those (of whatever nationality) who were citizens in 1940 at the time of Soviet occupation and their descendants were granted citizenship, leaving over 30% of the population in Latvia and 25% in Estonia without citizenship (ibid.). While Moscow, concerned with the conditions for Russian speaking minorities, was quite agitated by the Baltic initiatives and delayed the withdrawal of its armies, the institutions of the European Union, of which the Baltic states decidedly endeavored to become members, were closely monitoring the standards of human rights, as the minority and language rights are one of the main accession criteria. In short, these countries had to find out ways out of rather challenging language political situations and work on a balanced standpoint that would simultaneously satisfy the members of the EU for accepting them to the Union, ease the worries of Russian government and soothe its possible aggression, and respond to the nationals that were demanding their cultural security and independence.
On the other hand, membership to the EU has been perceived as both an opportunity and a potential threat concerning the Baltic languages. Hogan-Brun notes
21
the anticipation in external strengthening Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian as official languages of the Union, accompanied with a ―growing awareness of an ensuing local impact of more widely spoken languages such as English, French and German‖ (2005b, p. 368).
Ukraine, another independent republic of the post-Soviet period, similarly turned its attention on the empowerment of the national language and worked on the establishment of the superiority of Ukrainian over Russian.12 While Ukrainian was made the official language of the Republic, Russian was downgraded to the status of a minority language (Janmaat, 1999, p. 475). However, this has posed major problems, since the Russian speaking community forms the almost half of the Ukrainian citizens (Taranenko, 2007, p. 119 and 123). The new Constitution of the Ukraine adopted in 1996 further confirmed the status of Ukrainian as the state language, as well as a number of other laws (on education, mass media, television and broadcasting, the Ukrainian Armed Forces, citizenship, etc.) and state programs which also provided for the expansion of the functions of the Ukrainian language in society‖ (p . 127-128). The educational language policies expanded the use of Ukrainian against Russian; however, the political demand to register Russian as the second official language of the state remains powerful (ibid.).
Belarus followed a somewhat different pattern. Although, since the 1980s, ―the Belarusian language became the symbol of Belarusian independence‖ (Goujon, 1999, p. 661), the political leadership, even after independence, has been mostly in favor of maintaining a close relationship with Moscow and aimed at the continuation of the pro-Russian language politics. Goujon describes how Belarusian became the battleground for power between the two main factions running for the government since the independence (1999). The 1994 Constitution re-affirmed the article of the previous
12
For a sociolinguistic study on the Ukrainian language politics, see Bilaniuk (2005).
22
constitution, which stated that Belarusian is the official language of the state, but in 1996, a referendum approved an equal official status to Russian (p. 665).13
Kazakhstan, too, experienced a process of Russification with the establishment of Soviet Union. ―The issue of the Kazakh language was among the main grievances articulated by Kazakh intellectuals in the wake of the national revival during Perestroika.‖ (Bissenova, 2004, p. 5). The current constitution, adopted in 1995, grants Kazakh the status of state language, but it also recognizes ―Russian as the language of ‗interethnic communication‘ and guarantees its ‗equal use‘ in the government and media‖ (ibid.). In 1997, a Law on Languages was issued to support Kazakh in its use in bureaucracy and mass communications. Bissenova underlines that the politics of language has already coincided with political and social tensions among various sections of the society, especially between Kazakhs and Russians. Similar to the case in Belarus, there is a strong political opposition in Kazakhstan and an international pressure from the Russian diplomatic channels, to raise the status of Russian to the level of the second state language.
Azerbaijan became independent in 1991 and in its constitution, Article 21 notes that ‗‗the Azerbaijan language shall be the state language‖ (quoted in Bishop, 2006, p. 634). Speakers of minority languages constitute comparatively a smaller part of the society, with 3% Russian and 2% Armenian, hence, the language ideological debates are more focused on the issues of Azerbaijanian, itself, such as its script and purification (ibid.).
Uzbekistan, the most populated country of its region, exhibits alike numbers of linguistic minorities with 14% Russian and 4% of Tajiki speakers. Uzbekistan adopted a change in script to a Latin-based orthography in 1993. As in other Central Asian Republics, language and language policies have become important dimensions of the political sphere after independence, and moving away from a Slavic script to a Latin one is in concert with the creation of an authentic linguistic and cultural identity apart from Russia and Russian:
13
For a study that analyzes the uses of both languages in public spaces in Belarus, see N. Anthony Brown (2007). For another study by Brown on another dimension of Belarusian language issues, with a more sociolinguistic emphasis on the role of language in shaping individual and collective identity, see (2005). For a study on language ideologies in Belarus, see Woolhiser (2001).
23
―And perhaps most significantly, Latinized Uzbek emphasized the geopolitical borders of Uzbekistan, distinguishing it from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, which use Cyrillic script; Afghanistan, which uses Arabic script; and Tajikistan, which uses both Cyrillic and Arabic letters. (Turkmenistan also adopted a Latin alphabet but remains politically isolated because of the policies of its government.) (Montgomery, 2006, p. 291).
In the Republic of Tatarstan, de-Russification of the language, as well, has been an integral part of the Tatar nationalist ideology and identity. The Republic is similar to Ukraine in that the Tatar and Russian populations are both around 45%, as Tatars are slightly higher in number (Davis, Hammond, & Nizamova, 2000, p. 204). Since the declaration of Tatarstan‘s autonomy in 1990, Wertheim reports, ―government has been legislating ‗promotive‘ language policies in an attempt to put Tatar on more equal footing with Russian, such that Tatar is now one of the Republic‘s two official languages and Tatar language study is compulsory in primary and secondary school‖ (2003, p. 348). Tatarstan, despite the nationalist discourse and practices to support Tatar, experiences the hegemonic domination of Russian, as a legacy of the Soviet period. Davis, Hammond and Nizamova report that the 1989 census revealed that while more than 77% of Tatars knew Russian, only 1.1% of Russians understood Tatar (2000, p. 205). In parallel, where the state authority is less decisive, such in many aspects of public and cultural life, there is an imbalance in favor of Russian (p. 204).
The destruction of the Soviet system was also effective on what was once called ―Eastern Block‖ countries with communist regimes. Released from the subjugation by the Soviet regime, these eastern European countries turned their faces towards capitalist/liberal westernization. Pertaining to politics of language, these new regimes found themselves facing unaccustomed problems in the face of speedy transformation.14
Studies that focus on the post-Soviet language political issues bring forward novel insights into a variety of theoretical subjects. They refer to matters such as minority and/or linguistic rights, cross-cultural analysis of language politics, discourses on diversity and integrity especially those derived from Western experiences.
14
For a historical analysis of the language politics in Hungary, with a special emphasis on the developments after the fall of communism in 1989, see Medgyes Katalin Miklósy (2000). For the post-Yugoslavian case, see Greenberg (2001)
24
Ozolins, for example, by examining ―the specific sociolinguistic situation in the Baltic including the often unrecognised attitudes of the Russian-speaking minorities‖, introduces a ―critique of the minority-rights based approach of European institutions‖ (2003, p. 217). Hogan-Brun, similarly, ―explores issues pertaining to the transferability of standards developed for established democracies in the West to the situation of democratizing countries in Central and Eastern Europe, where the demographic legacy of the Soviet past has left its imprint on the structure and outlook of society‖ and ―considers a range of factors which need to be taken into account in Western discourses on diversity and integration, or sameness and difference, when applied to post-communist or post-imperialist contexts‖ (2005b, p. 367). Exemplified by both authors, the post-Soviet terrain not only raised new policy-based issues but also generated a new critical perspective that also reflects upon the Western experience and conceptions of language.
In addition to the critical analyses of the post-Soviet language politics, there has appeared another fertile ground for re-thinking the relationships among language, state, citizenship and nationality; the European Union.
2.3.2 The European Union
Established at first as the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, the European Union, by 2008, includes 27 states with two more, Croatia and Turkey, in the process of negotiations for full membership. The transnational project of the EU has been stimulating in many respects. For one, although the origins of the Union were based on post-WWII solidarity aimed at economical recovery, it promised the realization of the idea of a union of Europe. It was a dream to be emphasized from time to time since the Enlightenment to become the Europe, a singular entity, a unity could at last end the centuries old national and religious conflicts. Brought together, the peoples of Europe would enjoy the richness of cultural diversity and political unity simultaneously.
Mamadouh summarizes what makes the issue of language rather a complicated problematic for the EU, as follows:
